Samsung estimates third-quarter operating profit at $80bn

Samsung announced third-quarter earnings guidance, estimating consolidated operating profit at approximately 107.40 trillion won and sales at approximately 195 trillion won.[1] The company said the estimates use K-IFRS and represent the medians of its estimate ranges.[1] Those ranges were 107.3 trillion to 107.5 trillion won for operating profit and 194 trillion to 196 trillion won for sales.[1] The estimate would make Samsung the first Korean company to surpass 100 trillion won in quarterly operating profit.[3]

The estimated operating profit is 782.5% higher than a year earlier, while estimated sales are up 126.6%.[3] Profit is also above the brokerage consensus of 106.64 trillion won.[3] Sales, however, are below the 200.64 trillion won brokerage forecast.[3] For analysts and business planners, the gap is a reason to avoid treating the guidance as a uniform beat across measures: the profit estimate exceeded expectations, but the sales estimate did not.[3]

Samsung attributed the profit surge to strong demand for advanced memory chips used in AI computing.[4] The guidance arrives after the company reported second-quarter revenue of 171.5 trillion won and operating profit of 89.5 trillion won, both records at the time.[5] Samsung is one of the world’s largest memory-chip makers, alongside SK Hynix and Micron.[6] The evidence points to AI-related memory demand as a driver, but does not provide a third-quarter business-division breakdown or explain how much profit came from each product category.[4][5]

Samsung’s investor-relations calendar listed October 8, 2026, for the guidance announcement and scheduled the third-quarter earnings conference call for October 29, 2026, at 10 a.m. KST.[2] The full earnings, including a business-division breakdown, were expected later that month.[5] The stock response was not uniformly positive: Samsung shares fell 0.7% on Thursday morning despite the record profit estimate.[5] One report said the result still fell short of expectations, reflecting how demanding the AI trade had become.[5]